1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein relates to the field of manufactured buildings. In particular it relates to methods of production of such buildings and the wall, floor and other components thereof.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Manufactured residential and commercial buildings (particularly manufactured housing) is a major segment of the construction industry. Manufactured buildings provide a great number of advantages in both construction procedures and costs as compared to on-site construction methods and site-constructed buildings. These advantages include uniformity of structure, ability to maintain a consistent construction schedule unaffected by weather, favorable working conditions for construction personnel, ability to have appropriate tools, equipment and materials available and properly maintained essentially at all times, speed of construction, and so forth.
A manufactured building is one which is constructed off-site, usually in a factory specifically designed for such construction, and which upon completion of the major construction phases is then transported to its ultimate location and there put in place on a previously constructed foundation or set of piers. Depending on the nature of the particular manufactured building and the scheduling previously determined by the builder and the owner, greater or lesser degrees of finish work will be left to be completed at the location site following attachment of the building to its foundation.
In addition, is the building is to be formed from several individual modular units, assembly of the building into the final overall structure from those units will be done on-site. Most manufactured housing is modular in nature, and the final size and shape of the building will be determined by the number of modules which are interlinked at the site.
A major step in the construction of any manufactured building is the fabrication of the framing for the walls, floors and often ceilings, and attachment to that framing to the interior and exterior wall and floor panels or "skins." In the past, whether the framing was formed of wood, metal or a combination thereof, the individual panels making up the exterior or interior surfaces of the walls or floors had to be separately assembled and then manually attached to the frame, often using the same time and labor intensive methods used in conventional on-site construction. Use of such techniques, of course, substantially reduces the economies of production which would otherwise be inherent in the manufactured housing procedures. The problem arises from the difficulty of joining the panels/skins and the frame into a unitary structure and at the same time of simplifying the inclusion of the necessary in-wall and through-wall components and services such as electrical, plumbing, heating/ventilation/air conditioning and like. Heretofore manufacturers have not been able to take full advantage of the efficiencies which are offered by manufactured housing, because at critical stages such as the attachment of the skins or panels to the frame and the incorporation of the in-wall and through-wall services, the old conventional on-site techniques have still had to be used.
It would therefore be advantageous to have a system for construction of manufactured buildings which would allow easy integration of panels and frames into unitary wall and floor units, a means for easily and conveniently allowing incorporation of all of the necessary in-wall and through-wall services, and simple completion of the wall and floor structure into a modular unit.